Local oaf attempting to replace old laptop hard drive

Right, my other laptop's hard drive is on it's death bed and I'm in the process of getting a repair disc and a system image sorted so I don't have to muck about with reinstalling Windows, so software wise I'm sorted. I've also got my new hard drive picked out (A Seagate Momentus) so that's also not a problem.

My problem is I've never replaced laptop hardware before or desktop hardware for that matter. Looking at the instructions on the Samsung website it looks straight forward enough (http://www.samsung.com/us/support/howtoguide/N0000137/6413/101999/NP-P580-JA01US if you want a look). But I'm wondering just how difficult it is for someone like me who is less James May and more Clarkson when it comes to this kind of job.

So how hard can it be and are there any pitfalls I should watch for?

 

Well I've just learned an important lesson about why you should make a back up disc when you get the machine, hard drive's completely gone now and I think the registry is fubared with it because I couldn't see the disc drive in 'my computer' before the whole thing went south.

Looks like a clean Windows 7 install is in order for me, I take it if I somehow manage to install the hard drive without destroying Norwich* and then put the Windows 7 DVD in the disc drive, the drive will still work as normal and I'll be able to install from there?